Strong, flexible, feet can help us run faster

You might imagine that if you put on a pair of trainers and go out running your feet are going to get stronger over time. However, research suggests this is not the case with a study showed that recreation runners have the same amount of strength in their feet as sedentary individuals (1).

An interesting article was just published in Runner’s World magazine highlighting that stronger feet can make us better runners but also that running in minimal shoes will not strengthen the feet but that specific foot exercises will: https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/health/injury/a39472681/foot-strengthening-exercises

“Until now, most of the dialogue around building stronger feet has centred on injury prevention. A new study, however, suggests stronger feet might make you quicker too. Specifically, the researchers concluded that ‘strengthening of the short foot muscles may improve lactate threshold velocity’. In simpler terms, strong feet improve running economy. In the study, recreational runners were divided into two groups. One did daily foot-strengthening exercises; the other did no exercises but ran in Vibram FiveFingers shoes. At the end of the study, the Vibram group showed very minimal improvements in lactate threshold, while the foot-strengthening group enjoyed significant improvement.  “

Generally, it is accepted that foot strengthening exercises like the short foot exercise are difficult to learn, but the revolutionary Novabow™ system looks set to change the entire landscape around foot strengthening, providing an easy to use tool for performance enhancement, injury prevention, and rehab from foot injuries, surgery and other foot problems.

Using the novabow system to trengthen the foot

But foot strengthening doesn’t just help protect your feet from injury.

Foot strengthening has also been shown to improve balance, reduce knee pain, and improve ankle instability.

Importance of foot flexibility

Foot flexibility also has a huge role to play in keeping our entire bodies healthy. A study has demonstrated that our feet flatten as we put weight on them during walking, but then recoil back into a less flattened, more arched, configuration as we push off our standing foot for the next step. This “re-arching” is crucial for keeping the tibia /fibula in a more upright position during toe off and affects the way our whole body moves.

The Novabow™ system allows users to perform simple toe and arch stretching exercises whilst seated watching TV or at the office.

Using the novabow to make the foot more mobile

The Novabow system can be purchased here at

novabowsystem.com 

Strong foot muscles are important to long term health

Why do we need strong intrinsic foot muscles in our feet and why do most people have a weak "foot core".

The muscles that start and finish within our feet are called the intrinsic foot muscles and they are crucial for everyday living .

They have a large number of functions including -

1 Support for the arches of the foot

2 A fundamental role in propulsion

3 The foot muscles are key to our ability to balance and stay upright and have a direct link to the vestibular apparatus ( balance system of the inner ear)

4 The intrinsic foot muscles play an important role in proprioception ,that is to say our awareness of our body position relative to our surroundings.

5 Each foot plays an importance role in moving blood around our body as we move and may be viewed as a small but powerful heart. A single step can move a column of blood all the way from the foot to the heart itself. The foot muscles play a very important part in this pumping mechanism.

6 The foot muscles are an integral part of the foot and weakness can lead to foot deformities like bunions, hammer toes and claw toes. It is vital that the intrinsic foot muscles are kept strong and healthy especially as we age.

So if you put on a pair of running shoes and go out for a jog on a regular basis your feet are going to get stronger, right ? Well actually, no.

A piece of research was published some time ago that looked into shin pain in Japanese professional marathon runners and this showed that the pain was associated with weak foot musculature. Addressing this weakness with foot exercises saw the pain clear up.(Senda et al 1999 ). Senda also found that the feet of aged matched nurses were stronger than those of the professional runners. So the feet of professional distance runners was found to be less than that of people involved in no sporting activity.

In another study ( Curtis et al 2021) a research team found that wearing minimal shoes for everyday activities produced a strengthening effect of 57% in 6 months, demonstrating again that modern footwear changes how our feet are used and can lead to foot weakness.

What problems can foot weakness cause ?

Foot weakness has been linked to a whole range of foot and lower limb problems including shin splints, plantar fasciitis ( heel pain ) , knee pain, foot deformity, chronic ankle instability, and poorer balance which can lead to falls. Thankfully, research has shown that reversing foot weakness can improve many of these problems with foot doming/short foot exercise being amongst the most effective exercises .

What the novabow™ system does is allow doming against progressively increasing resistance and we know that progressive resistance training is a highly effective way of increasing muscle strength. It also allows the muscles of the foot to be strengthened in a raised ( dorsiflexed )position where we know they are more activated.

Finally ,research shows us that if you strengthen the intrinsic foot muscles this can lead to a reduced range of motion in the toes . The novabow uses a new piece of technology, shown in the figure below, to stretch the toes and maintain foot mobility .

buy via our site novabowsystem.com

References

1.      Measurement of the muscle power of the toes in female marathon runners using a toe dynamometer

M Senda 1, Y Takahara, Y Yagata, K Yamamoto, H Nagashima, H Tukiyama, H Inoue

Affiliations Expand

·         PMID: 10488406

·         DOI: 10.18926/AMO/31617

2 Daily activity in minimal footwear increases foot strength

·         Rory Curtis,

·         Catherine Willems,

·         Paolo Paoletti &

·         Kristiaan D’Août 

Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 18648 (2021) Cite this article Daily activity in minimal footwear increases foot strength

www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98070-0

The mechanics of toe off during sprinting

The mechanics of toe off during sprinting

Even professional runners can benefit from foot strengthening exercises

It is generally accepted that the plantar fascia and intrinsic muscles of the foot fulfil a number of roles during gait and that one of these is the storage and release of energy at different parts of the gait cycle via the windlass mechanism . However, researchers have long debated the question "during running when the stored energy is release, what does this energy help to move and in what direction does it move it."

We can look at the subject of concentric contraction of the toe flexors and consider a paper entitled "The architecture and contraction time of the intrinsic foot muscles " Tosovic et al ,University of Queensland ,2012 .

Based on the contraction time of the muscle, the paper suggests a role for flexor digitorum brevis (FDB) which involves the muscle acting to develop rapid ground reaction forces.

It made me think .Might it be that one role of the FDB is to assist in the rapid movement of the foot and leg /lower leg relative to the centre of mass (COM) rather than move the COM itself ?. Think fast feet !

Further to the above, might it be that during running and in particular sprinting, both the flexor digitorum brevis and the wound plantar fascia act to propel the foot in an initial, almost vertically upwards direction causing the lower leg and foot to accelerate relative to the rest of the leg with a subsequent flexing of the knee joint . I am not suggesting that this flexing action is in anyway sufficient to push the foot all the way up to the proximity of the glutes but only that it might assist in the initial flexing of the knee so that the range of motion at which the major knee flexors (semimembranosus ,semitendinosus and biceps femoris ) work most efficiently can be quickly achieved allowing faster recovery and preparation of the reference leg for subsequent strides . My understanding is that the knee flexors work most efficiently at between 20-30 degrees of knee flexion

On the subject of strengthening the toe flexor muscles of the foot and improved sprint performance a recently published paper which shows that strengthening the intrinsic toe flexors led, on average , to an improvement of 0.29 secs over a 50m sprint distance amongst a group of healthy male subjects .

The paper is Takayuki Hashimoto ;Keishoku Sakuraba -Strength Training for the Intrinsic Muscles of the Foot ;Effects on Muscle Strength ,the Foot Arch and Dynamic Parameters Before and After Training ; J.Phys.Ther.Sci.26 373-376,2014

The online version of the paper does not contain a photograph of the equipment used to strengthen the toes but the method seems to have involved flexing the toes against a load provided by scales whilst the ankle was kept in a plantarflexed position to reduce the input of the extrinsic toe flexors .

Finally, it may be useful to look at a sprinter moving in slow motion . The video I have in mind can be found here and features Asafa Powell .

The video focuses in on his feet at about 3mins 20 secs into the clip, just as he passes the 70 m mark . Just after the feet leave the ground there appears to be a judder at the ankle joint . This may represent of the forceful upward propulsion of the foot by the Intrinsic toe flexors and the unwinding plantar fascia timed to co-inside with the unweighting of the foot as the rest of the body moves forwards and upwards .

So the energy stored in the foot moves the lower leg relative to the rest of the body but not the body as a whole, and this gives faster turn over and faster sprinting speeds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRZvlQTTCMg